Nighthawks, 1942 by Edward Hopper Nighthawks, 1942 by Edward Hopper Courtesy of Nighthawks is a 1942 painting by Edward Hopper that portrays people sitting in a downtown diner late at night. It is Hopper's most famous work and is one of the most recognizable paintings in American art. Within months of its completion, it was sold to the Art Institute of Chicago for $3,000, and has remained there ever since. Starting shortly after their marriage in 1924, Edward Hopper and his wife, Josephine (Jo), kept a journal in which he would, using a pencil, make a sketch-drawing of each of his paintings, along with a precise description of certain technical details. Jo Hopper would then add additional information in which the themes of the painting are, to some degree, illuminated. A review of the page on which "Nighthawks" is entered shows (in Edward Hopper's handwriting) that the intended name of the work was actually "Night Hawks", and that the painting was completed on January 21, 1942.

Jo's handwritten notes about the painting give considerably more detail, including the interesting possibility that the painting's evocative title may have had its origins as a reference to the beak-shaped nose of the man at the bar: Night + brilliant interior of cheap restaurant. Bright items: cherry wood counter + tops of surrounding stools; light on metal tanks at rear right; brilliant streak of jade green tiles 3/4 cross canvas at base of glass of window curving at corner. Light walls, dull yellow ocre [sic] door into kitchen right. Very good looking blond boy in white (coat, cap) inside counter. Girl in red blouse, brown hair eating sandwich. Man night hawk (beak) in dark suit, steel grey hat, black band, blue shirt (clean) holding cigarette. Other figure dark sinister back at left. Light side walk outside pale greenish. Darkish red brick houses opposite. Sign across top of restaurant, dark Phillies 5c cigar. Picture of cigar. Outside of shop dark, green. Note: bit of bright ceiling inside shop against dark of outside street at edge of stretch of top of window. Nighthawks was probably Hopper's most ambitious essay in capturing the night-time effects of manmade light.

For one thing, the diner's plate-glass windows cause far more light to spill out onto the sidewalk and the brownstones on the far side of the street than is true in any of his other paintings. As well, this interior light comes from more than a single lightbulb, with the result that multiple shadows are cast, and some spots are brighter than others as a consequence of being lit from more than one angle. Across the street, the line of shadow caused by the upper edge of the diner window is clearly visible towards the top of the painting. These windows, and the ones below them as well, are partly lit by an unseen streetlight, which projects its own mix of light and shadow. As a final note, the bright interior light causes some of the surfaces within the diner to be reflective. This is clearest in the case of the right-hand edge of the rear window, which reflects a vertical yellow band of interior wall, but fainter reflections can also be made out, in the counter-top, of three of the diner's occupants. None of these reflections would be visible in daylight.

Hopper's biographer, Gail Levin, speculates that Hopper may have been inspired by Vincent Van Gogh 's Caf� at Night , which was showing at a gallery in New York in January 1942. The similarity in lighting and themes makes this possible; it is certainly very unlikely that Hopper would have failed to see the exhibition, and as Levin notes, the painting had twice been exhibited in the company of Hopper's own works. Beyond this, there is no evidence that Caf� at Night exercised an influence on Nighthawks. Although there is no evidence at all (other than the fact that Hopper admired the story), Levin also suggests that he may have been inspired by Ernest Hemingway's 1927 short story, The Killers. MOST POPULAR PAINTINGS Nighthawks | The Art Institute of Chicago Exhibition, Publication and Ownership Histories Exhibition History Art Institute of Chicago, The Fifty-third Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, Oct. 29-Dec. 10, 1942, cat. 132. Indianapolis, 1943. Art Institute of Chicago, The Fifty-fourth Annual Exhibition of American Paintings and Sculpture, Oct.

28-Dec. 12, 1943, no. 15. New York City, Whitney Museum of American Art, Edward Hopper: Retrospective Exhibition, Feb. 11-Mar. 26, 1950, cat. 61, plate 28; traveled to Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Apr. 13-May 14, 1950, Detroit Institute of Arts, June 4-July 2, 1950. New York City, Wildenstein, Loan Exhibition of Seventy Twentieth Century American Paintings, Feb. 21-Mar. 22, 1952, cat. 54. Venice, Esposiazione Biennale Internazionale d’Arte, June 14-Oct. 19, 1952, cat. 26. Lake Forest College, Illinois. New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Edward Hopper, Sept. 29-Nov. 29, 1964, cat. 43; traveled to Art Institute of Chicago, Dec. 18-Jan. 31, 1965.

Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio, Fifty Years of Modern Art, June 14-July 31, 1966, cat. 81. New York City, Whitney Museum of American Art, Edward Hopper: The Art and the Artist, Sept. 23, 1980-Jan. 18, 1981, cat. 386; traveled to London, Hayward Gallery, Feb. 11-Mar. 29, 1981 (separate Catalogue, no 96, p. 47), Amsterdam, Stedelijk Museum, Apr. 22-June 17, 1981, Düsseldorf, Städtische Kunsthalle, July 10-Sept. 6, 1981, Art Institute of Chicago, Oct. 3-Nov. 29, 1981, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Dec.16, 1981-Feb. 14, 1982.

Essen, Germany, Museum Folkwang, Edward Hopper und die Fotografie: die Warheit des Sichtbaren (Edward Hopper and Photography: The Truth of the Real), June 28-Sept. 27, 1992, p. 63, ill. London, Tate Modern, Edward Hopper, May 27-Sept. 5, 2004; traveled to Cologne, Museum Ludwig, Oct. 9, 2004-Jan. 9, 2005. New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, October 3-December 31, 2006. Boston, Museum of Fine Arts, Edward Hopper, May 6-August 19, 2007; traveled to Washington DC, National Gallery of Art, September 16, 2007-January 21, 2008; Art Institute of Chicago, February 16-May 11, 2008.

Madrid, Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Edward Hopper, June 12-September 16, 2012; traveled to Paris, Galeries nationales d'exposition du Grand Palais, October 5, 2012-January 28, 2013, Paris only. New York, Whitney Museum of American Art, Edward Hopper Drawings, May 23-October 6, 2013; travels to Dallas Museum of Art, November 17, 2013-February 16, 2014; Minneapolis, Walker Art Center, March 15-June 22, 2014, New York only. Art Institute of Chicago, Art and Appetite: American Painting, Culture, and Cuisine, November 10, 2013-January 27, 2014; traveled to Fort Worth, Amon Carter Museum of American Art, February 22-May 18, 2014, cat. 28.

Publication History Gail Levin, “Edward Hopper’s Nighthawks, Surrealism, and the War,” Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies 22, 2 (1996), pp. 180-95, fig. 1. The Art Institute of Chicago: Twentieth-Century Painting and Sculpture, selected by James N. Wood and Teri J. Edelstein (Art Institute of Chicago, 1996), p. 85, ill. Judith A. Barter et al., "American Modernism at the Art Institute of Chicago, From World War I to 1955," (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2009), cat. 133. Nina Baym et al., eds., "The Norton Anthology of American Literature," (W. W. Norton & Company, 2012), 8th edition, (ill.). Arthur Shimamura, "Experiencing Art: In the Brain of the Beholder" (Oxford University Press, 2013), p. 237 (ill.).

Derek Matravers, "Introducing Philosophy of Art: In Eight Case Studies," (Routledge, 2013), (ill.). Duane Preble Emeritus et al., Prebles' Artforms (Pearson, 2013), 11th ed., p. 428. (ill.). Robert Burleigh, "Edward Hopper Paints His World," (Henry Holt and Co., 2014), (ill.). Steven Mintz, "The Prime of Life: A History of Modern Adulthood," (Belknap Press, 2015), (ill.). Ramsay H. Slugg, "Handbook of Practical Planning for Art Collectors and Their Advisors," (ABA Book Publishing, 2015), (ill.). Judith A. Barter, ed. "America After the Fall: Painting in the 1930s" exh. cat. (Art Institute of Chicago/Yale University Press, 2016), fig. 3, p. 178. Ownership History The artist; consigned to Frank Rehn Galleries, 1942; sold to The Art Institute of Chicago, 1942.

Add this item to: Edward Hopper's Nighthawks Retro Staff | Comments “Nighthawks” (1942) was Edward Hopper’s most famous work. One of the most recognized works in American art is Edward Hopper’s 1942 painting, Nighthawks. Nighthawks features people sitting in a downtown diner late at night. The oil on canvas original measures 33-1/8″ x 60″. It is Hopper’s most famous work and within months of completion the Art Institute of Chicago bought it for $3,000. There’s debate over how the painting was titled. Hopper and his wife, Josephine (Jo), kept journals of sketches and detailed descriptions of paintings. The original title of the piece was “Night Hawks”. “Night hawk” is akin to “night owl”, which is used to describe someone who stays up late. “Nighthawks” is also a name for a real family of birds. Some say, however, that Jo Hopper’s description of the painting indicates the title might have been inspired by the beak-like nose of the man sitting next to the brunette woman.

Boulevard Broken Dreams Neon LED Sign There’s also debate over the location of the diner in the painting. Hopper had said the painting “was suggested by a restaurant on Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet” and that he “simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger”. Several Hopper aficionados have tried finding the exact location of the original diner. Many believe it was positioned near Mulry Square, while others believe it never truly existed, but, as Hopper said, was merely “suggested” by an establishment. Many adaptations and parodies of Nighthawks have been produced. The most recognizable reproduction – which is oft-confused as an original concept – is Gottfried Helnwein’s Boulevard of Broken Dreams, which replaces the three patrons with Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe and James Dean, and the attendant with Elvis Presley. Though produced in 1984, Helnwein’s painting “feels” as if it was painted during the actual time it references (the 1950s). Hopper’s work also influenced music, literature and film. Director Ridley Scott credits the “future noir” look of the movie Blade Runner to Nighthawks.

“I was constantly waving a reproduction of this painting under the noses of the production team to illustrate the look and mood I was after,” the director said. An episode of The Simpson’s features Homer eating at Yummy’s Donuts. Versions of Nighthawks have been used on posters, apparel, greeting cards, ads, and other items. Most of these parodies retain the original composition, but replace patrons and the attendant with other characters. An online search will return hundreds of parodies featuring the likes of Santa and his reindeer, Lego men, Star Wars characters, Peeps, Anime characters, and even Homer Simpson. The painting’s concept remains popular, and production of T-shirts, greeting cards, posters and other items remains consistent. But nothing will change history – that it was Edward Hopper who created the piece that would be often parodied and modernized, sometimes even over-used as a basis for alternative works. No matter whom (or what) is sitting at the counter. 15 Things You Might Not Know About 'Nighthawks' | Mental Floss 15 Things You Might Not Know About 'Nighthawks' Edward Hopper. Nighthawks, 1942. The Art Institute of Chicago, Friends of American Art Collection.

Like us on Facebook The quiet night scene of Edward Hopper’s most renowned painting sticks in the mind of anyone who sees it and feels familiar to anyone who’s taken an art history class. It may seem straightforward, but this deceptively simple piece holds a lot of secrets. 1. HOPPER’S WIFE WAS ITS first art historian. Josephine Hopper (née Nivison) oversaw a shared journal, where she and her husband took notes on his paintings. This is how we know the precise date of Nighthawks' completion (January 21, 1942), and various other details, like that the painting was originally titled Night Hawks. 2. Nighthawks was an instant classic. When Daniel Catton Rich, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, first laid eyes on the painting a few short months after Hopper put on the final touches, he declared it was as " fine as Homer "—referencing the 19th century American landscape painter. Rich was quick to purchase Nighthawks for the Art Institute for $3000 ($43,200.37 adjusting for inflation ). The Hopper classic is still on display in the Institute’s galleries. 3.

It's bigger than you MIGHT expect. A quiet scene that could be the beginning or end of a million different stories, Nighthawks seems like it might be a small painting like the Mona Lisa . But in fact, it measures 33 1/8 inches by 60 inches, roughly 2.75 feet by 5 feet. 4. The TITLE Nighthawks may have been A NOD TO one of the diner's patrons. In Josephine's notes, she wrote a description of one of the customers: "Man night hawk (beak) in dark suit, steel grey hat, black band, blue shirt (clean) holding cigarette." This note suggests that the prominent nose of this patron makes the painting’s title a bit more literal. 5. Both Edward and Josephine Hopper were models for Nighthawks. In a letter to his sister Marion, Josephine shared , "Ed has just finished a very fine picture—a lunch counter at night with 3 figures. Night Hawks would be a fine name for it. E. posed for the two men in a mirror and I for the girl. He was about a month and half working on it." 6.

Hopper storyboarded the painting ahead of Nighthawks' creation. Hopper became an avid sketch artist when he was just 10 years old, and as an adult he could often be found prowling the streets of New York, sketch pad and pencil in hand. While sketches are often the first step for a painting's creation, Hopper took it a step further by sketching storyboards to pick the precise moments he wanted to immortalize in the final painting. A 2013 exhibition at New York's Whitney Museum of American Art displayed 200 Hopper sketches, including 19 that led to Nighthawks, clearly laying out the work's evolution. 7. A HEMINGWAY SHORT STORY MAY HAVE HELPED INSPIRE THE PAINTING. Noted Hopper biographer Gail Levin has said , "Nighthawks was inspired by Hemingway's short story 'The Killers,' which Hopper read in Scribner's magazine and liked so much when it first came out, that he wrote a fan letter to Scribner's. He said that this writer was so much better than the rest and it was unusual that it wasn't sentimental or saccharin like so many stories.

But that short story has the sense of something about to happen, and it never does. In a sense, Hopper's paintings are just like that. So that enables writers and filmmakers–fiction writers and poets, and other artists, perhaps too–to project their own imagination…and the viewer in general." 8. There may be some influence from Van Gogh's Café At Night. Based on the similar theme and concentration on the play of light at night, Levin has also proposed that the famous Vincent Van Gogh piece may have sparked ideas in Hopper. Interestingly, Café at Night was exhibited in New York in January of 1942, right as Hopper was working on Nighthawks. It's probable that Hopper would have seen Van Gogh’s painting, as his own works were also on display at the same venue. 9. A popular reading of the piece focuses on "wartime isolation." Its characters are separated from the outside world by the light and windows Hopper carefully rendered. There's no door shown that would allow the viewer conceivable entrance into this lonely nighttime world. And even in their shared space, the characters are close without touching.

Painted right after the American entry into World War II, Nighthawks can be seen as an illustration of the chilling effects of that world-changing conflict. 10. But For Hopper, it was about feeling alone in a crowd. Many of the artist’s works reflected the isolation that could be felt amid the bustle of New York City. Of Nighthawks, the New York native said , "Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.” 11. The diner's flUorescent light MADE HOPPER’S JOB TRICKIER. In the early 1940s, commercial use of fluorescent lighting was still a relatively new phenomenon. To properly capture its luminance, Hopper experimented with a zinc white paint instead of a lead white one. However, in a lengthy interview recorded on June 17, 1959, Hopper explained how the zinc white ultimately cracked, demanding a renovation where it was replaced by the lead white. Because of this bad experience, Hopper never used zinc white again. 12. Hopper claimed THE Nighthawks diner was based on a real place. He was cagey about naming the actual eatery, though.

His only clue: "[Nighthawks] was suggested by a restaurant on New York’s Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet." 13. The actual location of this inspiration is a matter of debate. Popular opinion favors Mulry Square, a small triangular lot at Greenwich Avenue and Seventh Avenue. However, historical records show that a gas station occupied the lot in the early 1940s, not a diner. In 2014, a restaurant on Greenwich Street declared itself Nighthawks' inspiration after a Chicago native wandered in and noted the similarities between the place's layout and the famous painting. This is how Classic's Café at 679 Greenwich Street came to change its name to Nighthawks . 14. The Nighthawks diner is likely an amalgamation OF SEVERAL SPOTS. In May 2013, New York Magazine set out to track down the real inspiration for Nighthawks, scouring streets and historical photographs to settle the discussion once and for all. They ultimately determined Hopper's picture-perfect diner was made up of various elements of Manhattan architecture.

These components include a glass-and-steel storefront on 11th Street, the curve of the Flatiron Building, and a long-gone restaurant called Crawford Lunch. Fittingly, a 3D version of Nighthawks was created within a display window of the Flatiron Building in the summer of 2013. 15. Nighthawks has inspired countless other artists. As one of the most iconic works in the history of American art, Nighthawks has popped up throughout pop culture . In the fine arts, you can see its inspiration in George Segal's sculpture The Diner, Roger Brown's painting Puerto Rican Wedding, Banksy's Nighthawks and Gottfried's Helnwein's Boulevard of Broken Dreams , which populated Phillie's diner with tragic celebrities like James Dean, Humphrey Bogart, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley. Poet Wolf Wondratschek and novelist Joyce Carol Oates both wrote works named for Nighthawks. American singer-songwriter Tom Waits named his 1975 album Nighthawks at the Diner and threw his own spin on the painting by placing himself in a similar scenario on the record's cover.

Nighthawks classic scene is alluded to in films like Dario Argento's Deep Red, Wim Wenders’s The End of Violence , James Foley's Glengarry Glen Ross , and Herbert Ross' Pennies From Heaven . Plus it influenced the aesthetic of Ridley Scott's Blade Runner and Alex Proyas' Dark City . More from mental_floss... Nighthawks - Google Arts & Culture Nighthawks The Art Institute of Chicago Edward Hopper said that “Nighthawks” was inspired by “a restaurant on New York’s Greenwich Avenue where two streets meet,” but the image—with its carefully constructed composition and lack of narrative—has a timeless, universal quality that transcends its particular locale. One of the best-known images of twentieth-century art, the painting depicts an all-night diner in which three customers, all lost in their own thoughts, have congregated. Hopper’s understanding of the expressive possibilities of light playing on simplified shapes gives the painting its beauty. Fluorescent lights had just come into use in the early 1940s, and the all-night diner emits an eerie glow, like a beacon on the dark street corner.

Hopper eliminated any reference to an entrance, and the viewer, drawn to the light, is shut out from the scene by a seamless wedge of glass. The four anonymous and uncommunicative night owls seem as separate and remote from the viewer as they are from one another. (The red-haired woman was actually modeled by the artist’s wife, Jo.) Hopper denied that he purposefully infused this or any other of his paintings with symbols of human isolation and urban emptiness, but he acknowledged that in “Nighthawks” “unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.” Read more WebMuseum: Hopper, Edward Hopper, Edward Landscapes He trained under Robert Henri, 1900-06, and between 1906 and 1910 made three trips to Europe, though these had little influence on his style. Hopper exhibited at the Armoury Show in 1913, but from then until 1923 he abandoned painting, earning his living by commercial illustration. Thereafter, however, he gained widespread recognition as a central exponent of American Scene painting, expressing the loneliness, vacuity, and stagnation of town life.

Yet Hopper remained always an individualist: `I don't think I ever tried to paint the American scene; I'm trying to paint myself.' Nighthawks 1942 (120 Kb); Oil on canvas, 30 x 60 in; The Art Institute of Chicago Paintings such as Nighthawks (Art Institute of Chicago, 1942) convey a mood of loneliness and desolation by their emptiness or by the presence of anonymous, non-communicating figures. But of this picture Hopper said: `I didn't see it as particularly lonely... Unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city.' Deliberately so or not, in his still, reserved, and blandly handled paintings Hopper often exerts a powerful psychological impact -- distantly akin to that made by the Metaphysical painter de Chirico; but while de Chirico's effect was obtained by making the unreal seem real, Hopper's was rooted in the presentation of the familiar and concrete.

Self-Portrait 1925-30 (110 Kb); Oil on canvas, 25 1/16 x 20 3/8 in; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York American scene painting Edward Hopper painted American landscapes and cityscapes with a disturbing truth, expressing the world around him as a chilling, alienating, and often vacuous place. Everybody in a Hopper picture appears terribly alone. Hopper soon gained a widespread reputation as the artist who gave visual form to the loneliness and boredom of life in the big city. This was something new in art, perhaps an expression of the sense of human hopelessness that characterized the Great Depression of the 1930s. Edward Hopper has something of the lonely gravity peculiar to Thomas Eakins , a courageous fidelity to life as he feels it to be. He also shares Winslow Homer's power to recall the feel of things. For Hopper, this feel is insistently low-key and ruminative. He shows the modern world unflinchingly; even its gaieties are gently mournful, echoing the disillusionment that swept across the country after the start of the Great Depression in 1929.

Cape Cod Evening (1939; 77 x 102 cm (30 1/4 x 40 in)) should be idyllic, and in a way it is. The couple enjoy the evening sunshine outside their home, yet they are a couple only technically and the enjoyment is wholly passive as both are isolated and introspective in their reveries. Their house is closed to intimacy, the door firmly shut and the windows covered. The dog is the only alert creature, but even it turns away from the house. The thick, sinister trees tap on the window panes, but there will be no answer. Nighthawks - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Nighthawks This article is about the painting by Edward Hopper. For other uses, see Nighthawks (disambiguation) . Nighthawks Art Institute of Chicago , Chicago , Illinois Nighthawks ( 1942 ) is a painting by Edward Hopper that portrays people sitting in a downtown diner late at night. It is not only Hopper's most famous painting, but also one of the most recognizable in American art. It is currently in the collection of the Art Institute of Chicago .

Contents 4 External links [ edit ] About the painting "Nighthawks" may be Hopper's take on the term 'night owl' used to describe someone who stays up late. The scene was inspired by a diner (since demolished) in Greenwich Village , Hopper's home neighborhood in Manhattan . The now-vacant lot is known as Mulry Square , at the intersection of Seventh Avenue South, Greenwich Avenue, and West 11th Street. Hopper began painting it immediately after the attack on Pearl Harbor . After this event there was a widespread feeling of gloominess across the country, a feeling that is portrayed in the painting. The urban street is empty outside the diner, and inside none of the three patrons is apparently looking or talking to the others; all are lost in their own thoughts. Two are a couple, while the third is a man sitting alone, with his back to the viewer. The couple's noses resemble beaks, perhaps a reference to the title. The diner's sole attendant, looking up from his work, appears to be peering out the window past the customers. His age is indeterminate. The corner of the diner is curved; curved glass connects the large expanse of glass on its two sides.

Weather is understood to be warm, based on clothing worn by the patrons. No overcoats are in evidence; the woman's blouse is short-sleeved. Across the street are what appear to be open windows on the second story. The light from the restaurant floods out onto the street outside, and a sliver of light casts its way into one of the windows. This portrayal of modern urban life as empty or lonely is a common theme throughout Hopper's work. It is sharply outlined by the fact that the man with his back to us appears more lonely because of the couple sitting next to him. If one looks closely, it becomes apparent that there is no way out of the bar area, as the three walls of the counter form a triangle that traps the attendant. It is also notable that the diner has no visible door leading to the outside, which illustrates the idea of confinement and entrapment. Hopper denied that he had intended to communicate this in Nighthawks, but he admitted that "unconsciously, probably, I was painting the loneliness of a large city." At the time of the painting, fluorescent lights had just been developed, perhaps contributing to why the diner is casting such an eerie glow upon the almost pitch black outside world.

An advertisement for Phillies cigars is featured on top of the diner. The conclusion can also be drawn that Hopper painted the emptiness pervading the city. This conclusion can be substantiated by the observation that three-quarters of the painting is empty and has no sign of human life in it. [ edit ] Influence on popular culture There are certain paintings and sculpture throughout art history , and recently from 20th century modernism like Auguste Rodin 's The Thinker , Leonardo Da Vinci 's Mona Lisa , Edward Hopper 's Nighthawks, The Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali , Edvard Munch 's The Scream , Grant Wood 's American Gothic , Christina's World by Andrew Wyeth and a few others that seem to have a life of their own outside the world of art museums as cultural icons. Deeply rooted in the public imagination, these paintings and sculptures inspire parody, emulation, satire, and admiration. [ edit ] Painting and sculpture Roger Brown's Puerto Rican Wedding (1969).

Brown said that the café in the lower left corner of this painting "isn't set up like an imitation of Nighthawks, but still refers to it very much." [1] Many artists have produced works that allude or respond to Nighthawks. An early example is George Segal 's sculpture The Diner (1964-66), made from parts of a real diner with Segal's white plaster figures added, which resembles Nighthawks in its sense of loneliness and alienation as well as in its subject matter. Roger Brown , one of the Chicago Imagists , included a view into a corner cafe in his painting Puerto Rican Wedding (1969), a stylized nighttime street scene. Hopper influenced the Photorealists of the late 1960s and early 1970s, including Ralph Goings , who evoked Nighthawks in several paintings of diners. Another Photorealist, Richard Estes , painted a corner store in People's Flowers (1971), but in daylight, with the shop's large window reflecting the street and sky. [2] More direct visual quotations began to appear in the 1970s.

Perhaps the best known is Gottfried Helnwein 's painting Boulevard of Broken Dreams (1984), widely sold as a poster, which replaces the three diner patrons with American pop culture icons Humphrey Bogart , Marilyn Monroe , and James Dean , and the attendant with Elvis Presley [3] . According to Hopper scholar Gail Levin, Helnwein connected the bleak mood of Nighthawks with 1950s American cinema and with "the tragic fate of the decade's best-loved celebrities." [4] Greenwich Avenue (1986), one of several versions of Nighthawks painted by Mark Kostabi , increases the painting's scale and uses a palette of garish electric colors; the human figures are red and faceless. Nighthawks Revisited, a 1980 parody by Red Grooms , clutters the street scene with pedestrians, cats, and trash, [5] while a canvas by the British graffiti artist Banksy adds a man in Union Flag boxer shorts who has just thrown a chair at the diner window. [6] [ edit ] Film Hopper was an avid moviegoer, and critics have noted the resemblance of his paintings to film stills .

Several of his paintings suggest gangster films of the early 1930s such as Scarface and Little Caesar , a connection that can be seen in the clothes of the customers in Nighthawks. Nighthawks and other works such as Night Shadows (1921) also anticipate the look of film noir , whose development Hopper may have influenced. [7] [8] The period picture The Sting , which takes place in the 1930s, has a night time scene in a diner with a strong resemblance to Nighthawks . Hopper was an acknowledged influence on the film musical Pennies from Heaven (1981), in which director Ken Adams recreated Nighthawks as a set. [9] The German film director Wim Wenders recreated Nighthawks as the set for a film-within-a-film in The End of Violence (1997); [7] Wenders has suggested that Hopper's paintings appeal to filmmakers because "You can always tell where the camera is." [10] In Glengarry Glen Ross (1992), two characters visit a café resembling the Nighthawks diner in a scene that illustrates their solitude and despair.

[11] Hard Candy (2005), whose visual style suggests a Hopper painting, acknowledged the debt by setting one scene at a "Nighthawks Diner", where a character purchases a T-shirt with Nighthawks printed on it. [12] Nighthawks also influenced the "future noir" look of the movie Blade Runner ; director Ridley Scott said "I was constantly waving a reproduction of this painting under the noses of the production team to illustrate the look and mood I was after". [13] Noted surrealist horror film director Dario Argento went so far as to recreate the diner and the patrons in Nighthawks as part of a set for his 1976 film Deep Red (aka Profondo Rosso). [ edit ] Literature Several writers have explored how the customers in Nighthawks came to be in a diner at night, or what will happen next.

Wolf Wondratschek 's poem "Nighthawks: After Edward Hopper's Painting" imagines the man and woman sitting together in the diner as an estranged couple: "I bet she wrote him a letter/ Whatever it said, he's no longer the man / Who'd read her letters twice." [14] Joyce Carol Oates wrote interior monologues for the figures in the painting in her poem "Edward Hopper's Nighthawks, 1942". [15] A special issue of Der Spiegel included five brief dramatizations that build five different plots around the painting; one, by screenwriter Christof Schlingensief, turned the scene into a chainsaw massacre. Erik Jendresen also wrote a short story inspired by this painting. [16] [ edit ] Music Tom Waits 's album Nighthawks at the Diner (1975) features Nighthawks-inspired lyrics. [17] The cover art is a photograph of Waits in a diner. [ edit ] Popular references and parodies Nighthawks is referenced in the movie Hard Candy .

The diner at which Hayley meets Jeff is called "Nighthawks." She then has him purchase her a shirt with the original painting of Nighthawks on it. An establishing shot from " Homer vs. The Eighteenth Amendment ", one of several references to Nighthawks in the animated TV series The Simpsons. Nighthawks has been widely referenced and parodied in popular culture. Versions of it have appeared on posters, T-shirts, and greeting cards, as well as in comic books and advertisements. [18] Typically, these parodies -- like Helnwein's Boulevard of Broken Dreams, which became a popular poster [4] -- retain the diner and the highly recognizable diagonal composition of Nighthawks, but replace the patrons and attendant with other characters: animals, Santa Claus and his reindeer, or the cast of Tintin or Peanuts . [19] The television series That '70s Show , [20] Dead Like Me , [21] , The Simpsons , Rocko's Modern Life , [22] and " CSI: Crime Scene Investigation " [23] have all placed their own characters in versions of Nighthawks.

Comic book characters who have appeared in Nighthawks-inspired diners include the Human Torch in an Alex Ross panel in the graphic novel Marvels , Batman 's Commissioner Gordon , Spider Jerusalem , X-Factor and The Tick . [24] One parody of Nighthawks even inspired a parody of its own. Michael Bedard 's painting Window Shopping (1989), part of his Sitting Ducks series of posters, replaces the figures in the diner with ducks and shows a crocodile outside eyeing the ducks in anticipation. Poverino Peppino parodied this image in Boulevard of Broken Ducks (1993), in which a contented crocodile lies on the counter while four ducks stand outside in the rain. [25] The Mission, Kansas coffeehouse Nighthawks, noted for staying open as late as 3 a.m., is ostensibly named after the painting. Popular graffiti artist Banksy has also created a parody of this painting in which a fat, shirtless man with boxers of the Union Jack and a beer can on his hand stands inebriated outside the diner.

Two upside down plastic chairs are near the man, and in conjunction with the cracked glass in the diner's window, it can be assumed that the disruptive man has thrown them violently against the glass. The patrons within the diner sit calm and look at the man, as though not terribly disturbed by the action. The parody is not in the stencil style familiar to Banksy, however, its image holds the same sense of humor as Banksy's other work. The That 70s Show episode Drive In ends with Red and Kitty Foreman sitting in a diner when Kitty states that the moment seems familiar. The camera zooms out showing Nighthawks with Red and Kitty wearing the outfits of the man and woman sitting together. Nighthawks | The Art Institute of Chicago The Art Institute of Chicago Home > Exhibitions > Edward Hopper > Exhibition Themes > Nighthawks Nighthawks Hopper’s most famous painting was inspired by a diner located on a wedge-shaped corner of Greenwich Avenue in Hopper’s New York neighborhood.

In order to depict this scene, he explained, “I simplified the scene a great deal and made the restaurant bigger.” The round stools, placed at wide intervals, and the spare counters, on which stand a few coffee mugs, sugar jars, napkin holders, and an abandoned water glass, are rendered with deadpan precision, emphasizing the empty space between them. A sense of disquiet seems to echo the figures’ enigmatic relationship with one another. Do the four people know each other, or have they come into the diner to take refuge in the silent company of strangers? Nighthawks exemplifies Hopper’s facility at capturing the reality of modern life and representing emotional states through physical settings. It is a quiet, introspective picture. The architecture defines the composition, and the light orders, balances, and clarifies it. Hopper’s aesthetic vision, which has become associated with a particular brand of American realism, was the product of a rich combination of influences. Like most of his fellow Americans, the artist was an avid moviegoer, and the cinematic techniques of early film noir, including the prominent use of angles, shadows, patterns of light, and scenes shot through and framed by windows and doorways, made their way into his pictures.

In books, as in movies, Hopper was drawn to works created in spare, strong, and visual terms. He admired Ernest Hemingway’s short story “The Killers,” for instance, most of which takes place at the counter of a diner, and modern detective novels, in which a striving for simplicity came from an unsentimental desire to convey the truth. Merging these influences with certain qualities of French Impressionism , Postimpressionism , and Surrealism , Nighthawks is appealing in its distillation of subject and its unmistakable Americanness. On May 13, 1942, Hopper wrote to Daniel Catton Rich, director of the Art Institute of Chicago, that he was “very much pleased that you like my Nighthawks well enough to acquire it for the Art Institute. It is, I believe, one of the very best things I have painted. I seem to have come nearer to saying what I want to say in my work, this past winter, than I ever have before.” Reworked and parodied countless times, Nighthawks has become an icon of American culture. Edward Hopper. Nighthawks, 1942. Friends of American Art Collection.

Question: In 1942, which American painted 'Nighthawks'?
Answer: EDWARD HOPPER